Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Inspiration from Artists/Designers like Barbara Kruger

After viewing Barbara Kruger’s artworks, “Thinking of You”, “Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face”, “Buy Me, I’ll Change Your Life”, and “I Shop Therefore I am”, I was intrigued by her subject matter, composition, and the creative technique Kruger used to get her point across to the viewers. Many ideas can to mind in regards to producing images that highlight topics like eating disorders, body image, perception, consumerism, and etc. In my opinion, Kruger’s artworks attempt to mock the notion of marketing industries trying to convince and deceive mainstream society to think that their product is appropriate and “made” for them. With this in mind, Kruger produces images with a purpose in mind that involves convincing the viewer that the design being critiqued accurately correlates with the word or phrase being expressed. I believe that she does a great job at getting her point across with her dynamic images and text in her artwork.I also admire how Kruger incorporates graphic text into her photographic images. As a graphic designer, this technique is crucial in designing and formatting his or her work. Kruger aligns the images and text in such a way that make the overall artwork interesting and aesthetically pleasing to the viewer(s). The “distant advise” that I would take from Kruger’s work is that in order to persuade the viewers to believe that the one’s images are purposefully created to express an actual word or phrase that will be evident in the artwork, I as the artist or designer must create and arrange the objects (the image and the text) on a grid in such a way that will allow the viewer’s mind to imagine the word or phrase that is visually expressed in the art piece. In order to convince the viewers to believe that the subject matter from each book, magazine, photograph, and newspaper cover, all require dynamic cover pages, which will grab the attention of a large audience due to their curiosity of discovering what the written text or passage is about. Each of the artist/designers for these covers must take into consideration catch phrases, fonts, typefaces, and pictures that were going to “stand out” or correlate to the trends and fads of their specific time period(s). Based on Kruger’s work, it is the designers’ responsibility to create works that will stimulate the viewer and grab their undivided attention.

19 comments:

I agree that Kruger's work seamlessly incorporates text with image, yet the text seems to be rather unexpected in the two examples I looked at (I shop therefor I am & Thinking of You) seem to have unexpected text with the image. I am not sure if I am a huge fan of her work at this point or not, but I do enjoy her treatment of the image itself.

I see books out that take old photos with new, witty, out of context quotes. Interesting how Kruger (I cannot say if she started this type of work) did this as commentary and has now become commercialized to some degree.

I'm really drawn to her work dealing with feminism. The use of text and imagery works great to grab your attention. Even very short statements grabbed my attention for longer than after reading it. The pieces are very to the point, but very loaded with idea and meaning.

In addition to what other people are saying, I think it's also interesting in the two examples "I shop therefore I am" and "thinking of you" that it simply uses the image of hands. Hands are very personal, as everyone is unique. They also tell a lot about a person - hard working, delicate, etc. This makes her statements even more interesting, because the viewer gives the words a 'personality' behind them, which can completely change how they are interpreted.

Kruger is great with composition - her best known work, while formulaic, is effective and striking to this day. I think her aesthetic has aged better than her manifestos, though; it's hard for me to know how I would have viewed them when they first made the scene in the 80's, but today I can't help but see her as preaching to the choir. She makes bold statements, but fans of her work tend to already agree with her views - I doubt she's inspired many to criticize consumerism for the first time.

Barbara Kruger certainly creates a sense of uneasiness, as a means to grab her audience's attention. The awkward positions and cropping of her subjects play a crucial role in establishing her more critical tone.

This work is great! I have never seen this stuff before and it is great, thanks for the introduction.

Back to the important park of this blog thing, I agree with Tony to an extent that this type of work has been commercialized to an extent, which I find rather humorous and ironic. What I mean is that if the ads have been based off anti-consumerism art work then the style is taken and the placed into the public as a new campaign for a product, it brings up some interesting thoughts about art creating culture.

I have seen some of Kruger's compositions and they are eye catching.It was interesting to find out that her text or captions—in white-on-red on her photographs are either Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed.

I agree. Kruger's work on female identity resonates with me. Love it. I agree with Lauren though, these concepts are not ground breaking critiques on consumerism which means as designers her work makes us focus on more of the technical aspects of her work such as how she places text in conjunction with photography. I think she succeeds in this sense much more than originality.

I have seen her work many times before, even though I'm not a big fan I find myself thinking about what she has done with the images as well as the text and how she has made me think much deeper into her designs.

It is nice and encouraging to see someone with a very specific style, succeed in the design field. I feel like as a designer we need to be versatile in order to appeal to a wide audience. But her work illustrates that a good designer finds a way to effectively communicate their message using a particular style.